The Sandman (comic book)

"You need help, matey. You and that there young lady. That red stuff, that's blood that is. Meant to be on the inside, it is. Bad sign if it's not on the inside, that's what I says."

"What's going on?" "We're telling stories. You just missed a really good one about a man who won November 1937 in a poker game."

"If a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams. That is where I believe we have come. We are in the dreams of the city. That's why certain places hover on the brink of recognition; why we almost know where we are."

"If the city was dreaming," he told me, "then the city is asleep. And I do not fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless things. What I fear," he said, "is that one day the cities will waken. That one day the cities will rise."

"We of Faerie are of the wild magic. We are not creatures of spells and grimoires. We are spells, and we are written of in grimoires."

"When a world ends, there's always something left over. A story, perhaps, or a vision, or a hope. This inn is a refuge, after the lights go out. For a while."

"So, like everyone else, I was staring out of one of the windows of the inn at the end of the words. Worlds. I meant worlds."

"The words said over my father's body were hollow and dumb, and I couldn't find it in me to cry, not then. I knew I was watching the real thing here. There was true grief in each step they took across the sky, and they shouldered the casket as if they were shouldering the weight of the world."

"It was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you."

"She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life."

"I'm Matthew. I'm the raven. Not a raven—the raven. That's one of the weird things about the Dreaming—it's a kind of one-raven-at-a-time sort of place."

"It's never what they want, and if we give them what they think they want, they like it less than ever."

"There are no gryphons, no wyverns, no winged horses in the waking world, raven. Not anymore. But we are here..."

"I can remember the title, author, and location of every book in this library, Matthew. Every book that's ever been dreamed. Every book that's ever been imagined. Every book that's ever been lost. Millions upon millions of them. That's what I remember. It's my job. Other things... I forget sometimes."

"What's he got?" "A feather. Looks like a phoenix's." "They're lucky." "For whom?"

"There's a downstairs in everybody. That's where we live."

"It was then that Delirium noticed that she had absent-mindedly transformed into a hundred and eleven perfect, tiny multicoloured fish. Each fish sang a different song."

"Been there, Remiel. Done that. Wore the tee-shirt, ate the burger, bought the original cast album, choreographed the legions of the damned and orchestrated the screaming..."

"You didn't join the rebellion, not because you felt I was wrong, but because you were too damned scared. What would you have done, had I won? Told me that you'd always supported me ideologically? That you were secretly cheering me on the whole time?"

"I'm on my way to that castle. It's owned by a shape-changing ogre. I intend to wager the silver collar around my neck that the ogre cannot change itself into three things that I shall name for it." "Will the third shape be a mouse?" "Of course." "But... don't they ever learn?" "They can't. They're part of the story, just as I am."

"I didn't say it was my fault. I said it was my responsibility. I know the difference."

"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."

"The gods we prayed to when we were young used up their time so long ago. They cannot answer anymore."

"They never liked us, did they?" "Gods don't 'like'. They love and they hate and they ignore..."

"If you go looking for the Ladies... well, I don't know that that's such a good idea. You might find them."

"I was tttt-told to give you a message." "Oh yeah? Who's the message from?" "Your gggggg-grandmother. She said she had a message for you. She said it was important." "My grandmother is dead, Zelda." "I know. She said that. She said she was dead."

"You don't have to believe in God. But what about gods? Eh? The plurality of powers and dominions. The lords and ladies of field and thorn, of asphalt and sewer, gods of telephone and whore, gods of hospital and car-crash?"

"There is a madness needed to touch the gods, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the protection of sanity. To walk into the wild woods of madness..."

"Do you know your tragedy, Carla? ... It's that, for all your goodwill, for all your willingness to help, you never knew what any of this was all about. What was going on. You don't know how it ends. And you'll never get to find out."

"I am the mother to Odin's stallion, Sleipnir. I am the father of Fenrir sun-eater and of Hel half-rotted and of Jormungund the world-serpent. I am Loki Scar-Lip, Loki Skywalker, Loki Giant's Child, Loki Lie-Smith. I am Loki, who is fire and wit and hate. I am Loki. And I will be under an obligation to no one."

"And she wrapped her slimy body around his, and she whispered his name into his ear. And he screams, "Kill me, for God's sake, just get it over with." But she licks her lips with a long worm tongue, and she shakes her head. "A meal this good must never be hurried," she says. "Just hold still, boy, and let me enjoy myself." And she takes her first, gentle bite from his cheek with her sharp, sharp teeth..."

"You puzzle me, Dream-Weaver. Are you a spider who's spun a web of cunning and deceit and now waits patiently for his prey to come to him; or are you a deer frozen by the light of a hunter's flame, as disaster comes toward you?"

"He was a very clever doggy. He said things like... like... "I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.""

"I bear no grudges. I see things as they are: how then can I bear a grudge?"

"I have come a very long way. Further than I've ever gone before. I am seeking the Furies." "Not the Furies, my Lobelia. That's such a nasty name. It's one of the things they call women, to put us in our place..." "Termagant." "Vixen." "Witch." "Bitch." "Shrew." "Virago." "Do we look furious to you?" "No. You look very kind. Very wise. Very gentle."

"Dancing salamanders brought the children silver plates filled with exotic ice-creams of various flavors, and with fruits they had never seen before and would never see again... although they would dream of them, on rare occasions, until they died."

"He spoke to the embryonic silicon dreams who clustered in a far ballroom, and whispered to them, briefly, about the other machines that had dreamed in the distant past."

"The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning—zap! Well, for ages after, people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility."

"I know lots of things. People think I don't but I really do. I know more about us than any of us. That's just one of the things I know."

"I am honor-bound to warn you to stay on the path through the castle. Straying from the path could mean your destruction. You killed my friend, woman. Stray from your path."

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

"The thing you ought to remember about ravens, is that we belong equally to both genders. You don't see that every day. But we're as likely to be the Morrigan's as Odin's, as likely to be Eve's as Dream's."

"Listen, an eye's just an eye. A few more days, and he'll be something not even a raven would eat. Over to the ants..."

"It was like a bad TV show. "He's a reincarnated serial killer—his partner's a bird. They're cops.""

"I am the Puck, called Robin Goodfellow. I am a trickster, an antic prankster, a will o' the wisp. "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loose upon the world." That's me."

"A Puck is harder by far to hurt than some little lord of malice from the lands of ice and snow. We Pucks are old and hard and wild..."

"I bind you, Loki Sky Walker, malice-monger. I bind you with the guts of Narvi, your son. I bind you with frost and with fire, and with the weight of the world."

"Now, majesty, banishment, decapitation, or something lingering with boiling oil in it somewhere?" "Cluracan, you are a rascal..."

"You guys're an elite corps. [khoff!] They say I'm hard and I am hard. They say I am a bastard, and I'll tell you what, I am a bastard. A hard, tough bastard. A tough, hard bastard with a pumpkin for a head. But that doesn't mean I can't be proud'a you dumb lugs. And I am proud of you. All'a you—Wycziezbsky, O'Brien, McTavish, Silverstein, Pucci, and the little Norwegian. While some guys have skedaddled, and others have bolted into the castle, we're the Joe's that have faced the facts. And the facts are this. Is this. Are... whatever. [khoff] [khoff] We're at war."

"Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare—a pumpkin with a gun."